엄마를 상실한 중년여성의 애도 경험

Abstract

Over the last 20 years, women's development has been ambiguous. According to Freud, the mother-daughter relationship has been considered as an essential component of women's development. This study investigated how the mourning experience from daughters who were separated from their mothers by death offers any meaningful idea to women's life. For Hermeneutic phenomenology, researchers collected data from three women who have lost their mothers through in-depth interviews and drawing pictures with each of them. As a result, this study found that daughters started to fight with their mothers' death from the moment when they were informed. They also experienced a symbolic death until the moment of their mothers' death and even after the confirmation of their mothers' death. Daughters experienced symbolic death, both emotionally and physically as well as familiar experiences with their mothers through the repeated confirmation of death. However, these experiences encouraged daughters to adapt to the reality that was the absence of their mothers through the processes such as "Reflection," "Living in the Center of My life," and "Another Embrace." Through this new perspective, attempts, and relationships, daughters form a new identity and experience 'rebirth'. These daughters' changes were paradoxically strengthened through their resistances towards changes of reformation of themselves.